I wasn’t joking when I said that curling is my favorite sport. Much to my surprise, some people share this opinion… in fact, local friends even belong to a league. Last night I turned out to cheer Vince, Daphne, and Dan as they swished their way to victory. I love this town!
Last night we arranged to meet friends to go bowling. They were late so we started a game, occasionally joking and laughing with two dads and assorted children in the lane next to us. When Sallyann arrived she exclaimed with surprise and embraced the friendly strangers – they were old friends. Later I whispered an enquiry and she nodded at one of the men and said That is Kim’s ex-brother-in-law.
Moe dated Eric when she was still called Lara, before he married Kim, before she hooked up with Dishwasher Pete. The stranger from the next lane knows a whole cast of characters from my life.
Sallyann and her partner certainly do, spanning inexplicable decades, states, continents. Another woman who joined us is also friends with Amy Joy and Pete, though she lives in upstate New York and they are of course in Amsterdam.
Later I realized that Dan grew up in Erie and asked if he knows MV Moorhead, a journalist friend in Arizona. He looked puzzled for a second then asked He wrote for the paper?
Yes, indeed. What a small world we live in! And the bowling was of course awesome:
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
During one of my previous lives I had a habit of memorizing poetry, the more epic the better. On occasion this surfaces as an impromptu recitation of Die Lorelei (in German, though that is all I retain from high school language classes). I can also sometimes be tempted to do American revolutionary war poems (many, many war poems), or Evangeline, and on rare sad days even Lacplesis.
For the most part though the poems have faded away, along with all the trivia acquired as a history student, accessed only when confronted with a reminder. The other day I was wandering around Pittsburgh when I spotted a memorial plaque marking the exact spot where the local incarnation of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 happened, with deaths on both sides, and a conflagration that burned the depot. Of course, I cried.
Despite my choice to leave the country, I am in fact hopelessly in love with my homeland, the political process, the history and future of this messy nation. Today is Valentine’s Day, a false, commercial, and insipid day set aside from all the rest without rational reason, and my unravelling issues as a citizen expat are identical to those I’ve encountered in my romantic adventures.
My objection to the day is simple: love should be an operating principle, true love a substantial daily experience. Roses and candy and fancy dinners are all well and good, but distract from the hard work of real love. Just like election year debates act as a smokescreen rather than helping identify the most worthy candidates. Do I care who has good television presence? No. I care about voting records and other tangible proof of political courage. Full stop.
During one of our entertaining phone conversations last year Gordon asserted some point about my tendency to date thugs and I replied indignantly I feel quite cordial toward all of my exes – even the serial rapist!
He laughed and pointed out that would be a good title for another book, but I think it rather unwieldy. The point is valid though. When I love people, I love them for exactly who they are, not some projection of need or desire. Wherever I have encountered love it has been a fundamental truth, something precious and real.
In my life inconvenient facts like geographic distance or murder arraignments have never mattered much because I have found that love is viscous, inescapable. Love does not evaporate when you realize the other person is difficult, contrary, annoying, or has poor laundry habits. Love is not predicated on preference, but rather on something deeper.
Infatuation and romance last a year, maybe two – if you are lucky. The more sustainable variety of regard is quiet, kind, and enduring. Infatuation drives people to distraction. Love gives rides to the emergency room, year after year, without fail.
I mostly hang out with writers, musicians, artists, logicians, and other varieties of professional liars. This makes it very difficult to know what is true, and what is just a story. But love transcends rational thought and outlives passion.
Love is love, something found, not chosen – though we each make our own choices to accept or decline, to nurture or sabotage. True love does not die but remains, either a continuing gift or a grievous loss. People can be stupid, careless, mean.
From my observation most people (myself included) just flail along without a master plan – hurting each other all the time, whether accidentally, through good intent, or by malicious design. I work hard to be attentive but tend to be more analytical than emotional, which can sometimes feel quite cold and cruel.
Over the last year many friends my age have fallen prey to nostalgia and started to look up lost friends, old acquaintances, made plans to attend reunions. I have very little interest in such actions because the people I care most about have generally remained in my life. The only exception is of course abandoned lovers – specifically the very few I did not allow to become part of my extended chosen family. I do not think of them often, but when I do I wonder what they remember, how they account for whatever happened.
If etiquette allowed I would be keen to inquire. This would not be wise; James correctly advises that I really ought not talk to anyone who has threatened to take my life or kidnap my child. Fair enough – though none of these people scare me, I respect the fact that we acted as incendiary devices in each others lives.
Over the winter holiday Ana Erotica asked if my heart has ever been broken and I answered No, without elaborating. .
This was a prevarication of sorts, because the organ in question was in fact literally smashed during the car accident. I have also experienced woeful sadness over the deaths of loved ones. But she was asking about romantic love, and I have in fact never had my heart broken in that cliched way. Why?
I have certainly loved deeply, and been loved in return. I have also lost more than I can calculate. But, critically, I have never chosen who to love, only who to talk to. When I walk away it is an act of preservation. I am a strictly disciplined person, it is true – but I also retain an innocent faith in both electoral politics and true love. Even though I have fled my country of origin. Even though I have engaged in bloody battles. Even though much of my life has been an illustration of loss and grief and pain.
I still love my children, my husband, my mother, my friends, and everyone who has ever sincerely loved me. I still vote, and think, and act out of a principled regard for other people. I maintain a simple conviction that this story has a happy ending.
Today on Mister Rogers the characters in the Land of Make Believe discussed their particular and various definitions of love. There was no consensus, except Lady Elaine’s comment You know the feeling when you find it.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Last year I developed a fantasy (some of you may recall I have no imagination, so please translate this as plan) to acquire an apartment building and install all of my favorite people. So the dear would be near…. but in charge of their own chores.
Of course no such scheme could come to fruition in my favorite cities; they’re all way too expensive. But various people are trying to convince me to move to Pittsburgh and a large part of the pitch has been house porn.
Advance intelligence was correct – you can in fact buy whole city blocks for chump change! I’ve met punks who put grand houses on throwaway credit cards!
The other night Gordon texted to ask if I’ve bought one yet and I excitedly replied No, but I almost bought two adjoining apartment buildings! Wanna be my tenant?
He wisely did not reply.
One small hitch is the fact that Josh, Marcus, and MV are the only elsewhere friends who voluntarily wander through Pennsylvania – not exactly a high percentage in the friend category (though they are of course high quality). And then there is the pesky lack of an international hub airport. Still, a girl can dream!
The first time we met eleven or so years ago Lli was wearing a leopard print skirt, some kind of military surplus jacket, and lots of wild half-dreaded hair. My sartorial choices would have been much less ambitious – I was likely drifting around in a tattered old Smithfield t-shirt, and my hair was almost certainly bobbed and dyed black. Spectacles? I think I had on the pair I wore at seventeen… all of this, of course, a by-product of poverty so severe I could not even afford to go to the thrift store.
She was holding a beautiful blonde baby, and I was clutching one also. Those two infants could not walk or talk when they first met, but they remained friends as they grew and grew, consistently the tallest in their social scene. We all moved away from Portland on the same day five and a half years ago – Lli and her daughter to Pittsburgh, my small family to Seattle, then Europe.
In the years since we have met up again back in the old neighborhood, in NYC, and even in London. We’ve all changed substantially, growing independently into various careers, educations, styles, lives.
The incredibly fascinating thing is the fact that the children pick up the friendship without even a seconds pause. They still share the same attitude, interests, sense of humor, even matching winter coats… and of course, excessive height.
The girl is taller than her mother, and me, and my boy is only half an inch behind! It is truly a gift to have this continuity between a life I loved and abandoned, and a new life that continues to amaze. Kids at the Warhol Museum:
I’m sitting around in my knickers waiting to go out on an epic quest to see the city Mister Rogers called home.
During the layover in Chicago I texted various people to let them know I was back in the states and headed to Pennsylvania. Jody replied Pittsburgh? Awesome! I love Pittsburgh!
I was mildly baffled and asked Have you been there?
He answered Of course! I used to work for the AFL-CIO!
Oh yeah – I always forget. Since he is a man of leisure now it is hard to imagine but he was once a union operative… and very good at disrupting shareholder meetings, I am sure!
I asked for tips on things to do in the city and he replied Walk the picket line?
I pointed out that it is too cold and he answered Beat up scabs to stay warm!
Hmm. I think that I will go ride the funicular instead!
When informed of my geographic location Mark Mitchell imperiously demanded my presence in Seattle. Oh, if only I could go! It often feels like my heart has been cut up in little pieces and deposited in bloody parcels all over the world.
I would not trade my peripatetic and erratic travels for a false sense of stability – or anything else. These years on the road have been the most difficult, confusing, strange, enchanting, and amazing – out of a whole lifetime of adventure. After all, would I have met these people if I had just remained quietly at home?
The other night I took my kid to see the Moscow State Circus, an event well worth the price of admission just to see the contortionist.
Watching someone who has been able to undergo training to control and channel this sort of flexibility is simply fascinating. I am, like the performer, double jointed. In reality the term just means your joints are a little too loose – and for most people, this means you over-extend and get hurt.
I can move each of my toe joints independently, bend my fingers all the way back, turn my legs around or put them behind my head. My frame and muscles are also quite strong, but I never had the critical extra element of control over the whole thing; if I tried to swing on monkey bars it would shred my rotator cuff. I am the embodiment of sprain.
Our tickets were front row center and my son was absolutely thrilled and entranced – he loves all aspects of the human circus, is learning to ride a unicycle, says that he wants to attend mime college.
He was too young to accompany me the last time I went to New Mexico to see Marisa and Maria Fabulosa and Jake and the others in One Railroad Circus perform in a ghost town. He has now lived in the UK so long he has no memory of the trapeze in the living room at the Palace, or any of the parties and performances thrown by our aerialist friends.
The choice to leave that life behind was deliberate, and I do not regret it – even though there are many difficulties inherent in living so far from loved ones.
This fact was further underscored at the interval, when I received a message from my mother informing me that the final great-aunt has had a stroke.
I wish that I could be there to help in some practical fashion. Growing up in that family it was always very clear that love was expressed in pragmatic acts instead of lofty proclamations. This took all forms, from the certainty that someone would pick you up if your car broke down in the middle of the night, or you were forcibly removed from a Greyhound bus and left without money or shoes somewhere in Montana (not me – that honor goes to my aunt).
Rides to the emergency room, bail money, care packages sent to federal prisons – it was all covered. Regardless of the contingency or crime, we looked after our own.
When visiting, we never showed up empty-handed – you always took a casserole or home-fried chicken, or if it was the only option, stale discount pastries from the outlet store.
Because I was so sickly and odd, while the cousins raced dirt bikes or beat each other with sticks, I always sat with my grandmother and the great-aunts. As a direct consequence, my social skills are strongest when it comes to interacting with the frail and elderly; if I live that long, I will be an excellent old lady.
There were enough of us to assume that socializing with the older generation would always be a feature of our life; the founding family was thirty strong spread between three households. Subsequent generations produced children in double digits – a typical pioneer story.
My mother was one of seven, her closest sets of cousins came in units of five and six. But this falters in the late sixties, and most of the cousins at my level are only children.
The once large, vibrant, close-knit family is scattered, tattered, nearly extinct. There will be no more coffee cake mornings, or potluck suppers. No wild weddings or whiskey fueled wakes. No aunts, uncles, cousins growing up and getting old.
Even if I could fly back right now there would be very little for me to do except hide my tears.
I was at the circus with an eleven year old so of course I rallied and laughed and chatted as we returned to our seats. In the time left before the show started again I also fell into conversation with the elderly woman next to me, an unusual move on my part anywhere in the world, let alone England.
If circumstance and desire have destroyed almost all connections with my biological family that just means that I have to work harder to create a new one. The best tribute I can offer my great-aunt is the fact that she and her sisters taught me well, that I will continue their tradition of taking care of the people around me, no matter how difficult, no matter what happens.
This afternoon I received a text from somewhere in South America (I guess) saying Mark your calendar, party at my house in Spain! Will be extraordinary… promise!
I was thrilled and twirled with excitement, even though there is no way I can get away for the next few months. I can’t even make it to Iain’s birthday celebration in London this week, let alone a lost weekend of wicked debauchery in another country. No childcare, no parties!
Then I remembered that my mother is coming to visit, facilitating my escape… I can fly to Malaga from Prague! I am so endlessly thrilled!
However, the actually extraordinary thing about invitation? It came from someone who attended the same junior high.
The morning I met David in 1984 we were just a motley collection of teenage outcasts standing in line at the waterbed store in a derelict western town, shivering against the cold wet dawn, waiting to buy tickets for the first ever Madonna concert.
Together we listed through the indignities of a junior high run along the lines of a federal prison, and a high school featuring barbed wire and security cameras. We threw Kool-Aid parties when others were getting into crack. While our peers nailed lived kittens to trees, we amused each other with pranks like forking lawns.
It was a perilous, innocent, awful time, and when we parted at age eighteen we were separately fleeing not just the town but our respective dates, families, lives.
We were lost to each other from that day until just recently – and only then because he lives in London and I live in Cambridge. Who would have dreamed how far we would go? Who would have guessed we had the capacity to grow into adults who are actually more playful and delighted and determined than we were at age thirteen?
Not me, for sure.
I didn’t even think we would stay alive long enough to cross the county line. Oh, how I adore David!
The last time I was in Amsterdam visiting Dishwasher Pete and Amy Joy they showed me photographs of a trip with someone who looked very familiar. I said Um, so…. how do you know Sallyann?
When I left my government career I swore an oath that I would never again work just for money, but only for love of the work itself. Of course, that meant I had a lot of spare time, most of which I filled by creating esoteric little web sites that you have never heard of.
Ten years ago I was a subscriber to a zine out of California. When the company running the website realized they were not going to make a profit off the venture they pulled out and I took over as publisher.
From the very first day the project was collaborative in nature, with volunteers from all over the nation (and later world) pitching in whatever skills they could spare. One of the very first people to step up was an architect from Pittsburgh called Sallyann.
If memory serves, she designed the very first iteration of the site that gradually grew into the behemoth that is now known as Hipmama.com. Kim – another Pittsburgh resident – was one of the first moderators. Lli was a personal friend based in Portland, and she was involved in all manner of strategic planning for the project, and five or six years ago she also moved to Pittsburgh.
When I say that someone volunteered to help with HM, this means that they offered something really rare and precious, because for all the wonderful things the site has meant or accomplished, the experience of working behind the scenes has always been, at the very least, challenging. For some of us it has been quite brutal.
The volunteers all worked without monetary compensation, often in difficult circumstances, to build and nurture a community – frequently without thanks or proper acknowledgment from the people they served. Because, of course, that was never the point.
I feel such a high level of admiration for the volunteers I can never really express my gratitude; they are, simply, the best people I have ever had the privilege to work with. Lli has been in touch throughout the entire decade, and we see each other whenever possible – sometimes in Portland but also in NYC and London, wherever we happen to turn up.
I haven’t heard from the other two in awhile but when I wrote to say that Byron moved to their fair city all three demonstrated the grace and charm that characterized our earliest friendships, offering to take him out and show him around and help him get to know the city.
I tend to fling myself at new experiences without any expectation of what the future might hold. When I stop to trace the way that this life has introduced me to so many amazing people I am astonished at my great fortune, marked not by material wealth but rather by friendship. It could have been very different.
I am, as always, so honored to have these friends.
Sarah is back in town – hurray! She is here to help David pack and leave – oh no!
I met them courtesy of Gordon – a fortuitous connection that smoothed the path as I moved from one country to the next. We’ve known each other through major life transitions, and I adore them both.
Sarah is even, through a combination of chance, choice, and coincidence, one of the very few people I’ve ever taken on a major boat ride.
Last night we met at the Castle for perhaps the last time; oh, how I’ll miss them when they’re both gone for good! Sarah is also, of course, my Ladychat guru and she demanded scandal and gossip.
Since last we met I’ve been to Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Nice, Paris, Rome…. and probably a few other places I’ve forgotten. Unfortunately for Sarah, I’ve mostly behaved myself – though I did have some stories to tell about other accomplices.
Plus, guess who I ran into at the bar? Jean, no longer deported! He was with Stelios but later came and joined our group. Conversation ranged across all manner of topics with particular emphasis on immigration law given Jean’s recent woes, David’s efforts to extend so he can finish the dissertation, and the fact that I travel with visa denied stamped in my passport.
They did extract sufficient facts to harass and mock me; Sarah and David are hilarious, beloved – and the loss of their companionship will be much lamented. Good luck to them, and a beautiful baby girl, as they venture forth to a new life!
The other day I was reminded again that in certain local circles I am viewed as a wanton and dissolute femme fatale. I was already consulting with Mark Mitchell about summer travel plans and took the opportunity to lodge an indignant complaint about my reputation in this town.
He wrote You have become a dangerous libertine I’m afraid … I would hate to have to guillotine you come the revolution.
I replied If you have to guillotine me, could you at least make sure my hair doesn’t get messed up?
His answer? We will tie your hair up with a pretty ribbon before you receive the kiss of the blade.
Oh, how I miss Seattle! Bauhaus, August 2007:
This morning I was waiting for some packages to be delivered and idly flicking through my ipod, looking for music I haven’t heard a million times. Much to my surprise I happened upon the soundtrack to Valley Girl.
I have no idea how it got there – not exactly a film I liked, let alone a cultural trend I embraced. Nicholas Coppola aka Cage as a punk? Even in my rural Northwestern adolescence, I knew better.
Plus listening to Johnny Are You Queer? did not prove at all illuminating, let alone fun. Oh, the eighties!
Though I do have this side question after reading the wiki: E.G. Daily was married to Rick Salomon for five years? Huh? Not exactly what I had imagined from the love interest in Pee-Wee. Let alone the voice of Tommy Pickles. But I digress.
The interesting thing about soundtracks is of course whatever memory or emotion they can bring back unexpectedly. This particular album has zero resonance (nope, no tender memories of (I Melt with You), but others can take me straight back to times and places I sometimes wish to forget.
The very earliest illuminating musical moment I remember was provided by a scratchy cassette playing a version of Rock Lobster recorded off a weak radio channel. That song rocked my world profoundly – when? Not as early as 1978 (I was only seven years old!) but probably somewhere around 1981, when my musical tastes diverged from that of my family.
You can’t listen to Neil Diamond your whole life, after all.
Other early sources included Joan Jett (obviously) and the Go-Gos, still arguably my first exposure to real punk music, regardless of what the boys in the audience might mumble.
My first concert was the first night of the first ever Madonna Virgin Tour, in 1984, when I was in the midst of cancer treatments and about to drop out of school. I mostly sat with my forehead pressed to the guard rail, too sick to care, but I remember the opening act quite clearly: the Beastie Boys, booed off the stage, screaming Fuck you, Seattle! That was way more my speed than Holiday.
When you live in the back of beyond it is impossible to be all that picky; we took what we could scavenge from older kids, random trips to the big city, Bombshelter Videos, the flickering yet merciful offerings of KJET, bits of good stuff on 120 Minutes.
In the summer of 1986 all my friends were into The Cure, and since I was one of the few kids with a car and license (but no curfew) I dutifully listened while ferrying people back and forth. I had no particular opinion, but a couple of those albums became entwined with the experience of falling in love for the first time.
We went on a maybe-date to see Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me at the Coliseum. So: the first time a boy held my hand I was staring at Robert Smith shambling around drunk (we presume) singing dark and alarming love ballads. How prophetic. That particular relationship ended in bitter recriminations and death threats but I can still listen to The Cure with fond regard.
Recently I commented over dinner that I am relieved no albums remind me of the breakup and Byron said Oh no – there is one, and I can tell you exactly what it is! You’ve never once let me play it!
–What?
I shuddered. Oh, indeed. Except in my mind that particular sonic experience is more connected to waking up to the sight of blood smeared everywhere: the car accident that destroyed everything.
Even though Laibach was actually playing; for whatever reason, the Laibach album was not writ upon my scars.
Later that year, driving around endlessly with thoughts of suicide ruling my every waking moment, I know that I was listening to The Pixies because I lost custody of the music collection and I was down to exactly one tape.
Why then is my number one musical memory of that era the fact that the Eagles song Take it Easy seemed to persecute me at every turn? Hard to say, but one thing is clear – the music I actually remember most is the stuff I can still hear on the radio.
That fact does not reflect my actual musical taste; I was at most of the seminal NW shows between 1985 and 1990, though I have zero memory of them: I have efficiently erased the songs from my brain. Given the chance someone with a similar background could probably assemble a mix tape that would put me in a hyperventilating panic (this is not a challenge).
Nickle, for instance, is prone to asking clever questions like Do you remember the night the punks rioted on the Bremerton ferry?
Well, yes. That happened when a bunch of Seattle kids came over to Bremerton for a show at Natacha’s. All of which I will forget as soon as I finish typing this sentence. I do not wish to open the cupboard of my mind that contains the details of the show in question.
The Violent Femmes were the soundtrack of next falling in, if not love, then impossible romantic illusions leading onward to becoming a mother. Not because I picked em (either love object or album), but because someone else did – along with Metallica, Guns N Roses, all the usual suspects who come back and taunt me when I go to karaoke.
Sheela Na Gig calls up a crisp memory of standing in the pantry at my parents house talking to Byron, calling from sixty miles away to ask if I wanted to go to a PJ Harvey show. That night. Somewhere in Seattle (we could meet mebbe, or something, voice trails off…) To which I sighed in exasperation and pointed out that as the parent of a two year old I could hardly go to a show without advance warning to arrange childcare, now could I?
Byron was supposed to be a passing fancy; who would have guessed at the complications? And what was I listening to? Sonic Youth. I don’t wanna, I don’t think so, I don’t wanna, I don’t think so……
That, of course, also covers my early career in government and abrupt decision to vanish for awhile. During the early Portland years I was so poor I could not get a needle for the stereo, or buy new music at all. Mostly I listened to stuff that Kim Singer sent from Pittsburgh – the first couple of Belle & Sebastian albums – or random review copies – including lots of Elliot Smith – and tapes of Beth’s radio show in Madison.
After that there was the Chorus, and singing, and all the amazing musicians who treated my house like a community center. When I left Portland it felt like losing a limb, and I reverted to Elliot Smith, this time albums bought from a store. His albums are a perfect companion for extended mourning; if only there were more of them.
I’m not going to list the various friends who make music I listened to over the years, for the expedient reason I might forget to put someone in this paragraph who would then have their feelings hurt. Quite frequently when my grown-up daughter has discovered a new music sensation she calls me up asks if I know them and I reply something like Oh, that is Pam’s best friend, and I think we had seminar together in 1990….
But she cuts me off and exclaims I don’t care about that! I want to know if you like the music!
No comment.
Though in a similar vein, I find it strange and alarming to hear what I think of as friends from the neighborhood, or people I knew in college, or people I would commonly see flopping about in other modes in my environment, playing from jukeboxes across the world.
One specific song has leapt out and made me cry in Madrid, Paris, Rome, London…. and no, I will not specify which song or band.